The British Humanist Society have in the past run bus adverts proclaiming “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Sick of adverts informing non-believers they were heading for hell, they decided to strike back in to defend the godless, moral majority.

Following the success of the last campaign they have decided to run a new one on an altogether more serious topic.

At Christmas-time one year my daily newspaper, the Independent, was looking for a seasonal image and found a heart-warmingly ecumenical one at a school nativity play. The Three Wise Men were played by, as the caption glowingly said, Shadbreet (a Sikh), Musharraf (a Muslim) and Adele (a Christian), all aged four. Charming? Heart-warming? No, it is not, it is neither; it is grotesque […]

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Imagine an identical photograph, with the caption changed as follows: “Shadbreet (a Keynesian), Musharaff (a Monetarist) and Adele (a Marxist), all aged four.” Wouldn’t this be a candidate for irate letters of protest? It certainly should be.

Children are innocent, they are yet to develop the power to choose for themselves, and so it is unfair to arbitrarily label them with the philosophical beliefs of their parents. Nothing controversial here, not least if you’re a Baptist.

No. They aren’t. They are children. Let me reiterate once again; if these children cannot be Monetarists or Marxists then they cannot be evangelicals.

This is the whole point of the campaign! And for around 700 words Ruth Gledhill misses this point, again and again and again.

She even quotes a demolition of her argument:

The British Humanist Association said that it did not matter whether the children were Christians [LO: they are not Christian]. “That’s one of the points of our campaign,” said Andrew Copson, the association’s education director[LO: Well, duh!].

Not only that, but her sub-editor thought this piece was cogent enough to be put on page seven. Her editor thought it was worthy of printing at all. It is not worth the fish and chip wrapping it is printed on (in fact, I don’t think I’d want my chips wrapped in a turd sandwich like this).

This argument falls over before it is even put up. It is a nonsense which is deconstruction by twelve words from the Humanist Society and the picture of a cute, philosophically agnostic 8 year old.

Not that Ruth Gledhill knows that. Oh no, she’s just written a terribly clever article for The Times.